Library Journal suggests libraries are too white

Perhaps Library Journal was intending to be provocative when they tweeted out a blog post by Sofia Leung, a librarian from “unceded Wampanoag land” (Massachusetts) about how libraries perpetrate whiteness through their collections. The concept is one of critical race theory. Which by the way, it has always been interesting to me that intellectuals and those associated with academia will argue that race doesn’t exist, yet filter their entire world view through the power dynamics of race relations.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Leung had to say about whiteness in libraries: “Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries,” says Leung. “They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc.”

“Libraries filled with mostly white collections indicates that we don’t care about what POC [People of Colour] think, we don’t care to hear from POC themselves, we don’t consider POC to be scholars, we don’t think POC are as valuable, knowledgeable, or as important as white people.”

You have to be an academic to have ideas this stupid. Thankfully, it’s not just me who thought this post was ludicrous. At the time of writing this, the original Tweet is getting ratioed pretty hard. At only 500 retweets, the post itself has garnered tonnes of negative attention and is currently at 6,000 mostly furious replies.

Let the record show that United States as a country takes more immigrants per year than the rest of the world. And those immigrants are from all backgrounds and religions. It is not a perfect system, but you’d be hard pressed to find one that is.

As far as treating minorities goes, the U.S. doing a much better job than a country like, say, China, that is currently holding their Uyghur Muslim population concentration camps, forcing them to eat pork and drink alcohol.

And yes, I can already hear the retorts about the United States’ insanely high prison population. And I agree with you. But how many of those people are imprisoned for something they said, or something they believe? Not many, I’d assume.

I am generally hesitant to call someone racist. It’s a nasty title, and one that should be applied cautiously. But with just about everyone you can think of being labeled a white supremacist, or a neo-Nazi, It’s becoming harder and harder not to name-call.

In this case, I don’t believe I’m name-calling or talking out of turn when I say I believe that Sofia Leung is a racist. Do not judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge its content by the skin colour of the author. Ideas are ideas, and should be judged by their quality, not by its “racial background.” Dissecting the power structures surrounding race creates a very menacing and convenient boogeyman, but what good does that do?

Attacking “whiteness” is not progressive. It’s reckless and short sighted.

I know not whether an account is given of the means I used to establish the Philadelphia public library, which, from a small beginning, is now become so considerable, though I remember to have come down to near the time of that transaction (1730). I will therefore begin here with an account of it, which may be struck out if found to have been already given.

At the time I establish’d myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston. In New York and Philad’a the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who lov’d reading were oblig’d to send for their books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the alehouse, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I propos’d that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wish’d to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us.

Finding the advantage of this little collection, I propos’d to render the benefit from books more common, by commencing a public subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer, Mr. Charles Brockden, to put the whole in form of articles of agreement to be subscribed, by which each subscriber engag’d to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of books, and an annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry, to find more than fifty persons, mostly young tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library was opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ’d by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.

When we were about to sign the above-mentioned articles, which were to be binding upon us, our heirs, etc., for fifty years, Mr. Brockden, the scrivener, said to us, “You are young men, but it is scarcely probable that any of you will live to see the expiration of the term fix’d in the instrument.” A number of us, however, are yet living; but the instrument was after a few years rendered null by a charter that incorporated and gave perpetuity to the company.

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one’s self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos’d to raise one’s reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis’d it on such occasions; and, from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid. If it remains a while uncertain to whom the merit belongs, some one more vain than yourself will be encouraged to claim it, and then even envy will be disposed to do you justice by plucking those assumed feathers, and restoring them to their right owner.

This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair’d in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allow’d myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu’d as indefatigable as it was necessary.

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